I think it's ridiculous to assert that CRZ brought "nothing good" to the game. What you may mean is it brought more bad than good. That might be more fair, but I suspect that it's still not true since CRZ implementation was probably a technical and possibly a business prerequisite for connected realms.

connected adjective
: joined or linked together

: having useful social, professional, or commercial relationships

Synonym: merge

hmmm.... so CRZ, made merging realms possible? You do get the meaning of these words... right?

Mostly agree. The only activities people do in old zones are level and do achievements. It's not really fun or interesting gameplay to make it more difficult to get X Rare Mount or Y Achievement simply because the entire population of WoW can be merged in a virtual space. They say it is 'how it was intended' when the reality is the game has never been like that. Just sounds like a bit of hypocrisy to keep dangling a carrot really. I think they should make CRZ optional(with a toggle). That way people wanting to do specific activities can choose to only be on their server without other players.

If they do that (and I hope they do), they would have to put it on by default. I'd instantly disable it on every single character, because I really don't care whether I'm walking in Stranglethorn Vale with five other people or alone, running around alone would actually make me level faster. If however, I need help or aren't playing with friends at that point, I can just enable it to get some company.

Sounds like OP just doesn't like playing with other people that much. Really the game is better when you only see 5 other people in a zone?

That is true I guess for some of the zones that feel more immersive when empty (Ferelas; Silithus, Blasted Lands) but places like Westfall or Redridge (especially considering this is where the NEW players will be) should be full of players experiencing an MMO.

I love playing with other people. On my merged realms, where I can go back for revenge, or to go after a rare I spotted as I flew over head. I have no issues with people. I have issues with not being able to move from zone to zone and be confident I did not just end up 5 servers away from my own.

Blizzard wants a more live community. CRZ is solving 1/2 of that issue. The other half is that when you see other players, they are competition. You don't want them to be there. It's been like this for so long that no one can see that this is the real issue. No CRZ will simply mean for some places, on some servers you will basically be playing a single player game.

The better solution is to make it so that the effect of other players being in the same place as you has a more positive effect than negative. Although I can think of a dozen ways right now to make this possible, they will all have side effects that could make things worse.

Took my wife and I about 30 minutes to get it done for our 2 alts last night, mainly because so many people were doing it that occasionally the quest bugged and didn't produce the mob we needed to kill forcing us to abandon and re-get it. Not to mention the other slow-spawning "named" mobs that now make Nagrand, previously one of the best leveling zones, a huge bottleneck now.

I'm a pretty smart guy. At least that's what they tell me. I know exactly what these words mean.

Can you please elaborate on what point you were trying and failing to make here?

Well, it would seem they have been lying. Your initial statement claims that CRZ laid the groundwork for Connected Realms. Connected Realms is just a fancy term for merger. They could have merged realms without ever implementing CRZ. CRZ was little more than a band-aid for dead/dying realms/zones. Giving CRZ praise for being some sort of catalyst for future endeavors is like thanking the Germans for forcing us to speed up our technological advances back in the 40s.

I noticed something yesterday too. I was on one of my alt servers (Zangarmarsh), and one of the realms that it's connected to with CRZ was down, which meant no resources, NPCs, or mobs out in the world. I couldn't do anything on it other than sit in Org, which is fucked up to be honest. Those things should be visible regardless of what realms are up or down for maintenance.

Speak for yourself. I was leveling in westfall the other day. grouped up with a random person from another server and we blow through some quests until we hit 15. then proceeded to do some dungeons together. Sadly they had the exp potion also so it only lasted for 3 dungeons

I didn't say leveling with people wasn't fun. I also said it should be a choice so that you can opt for that experience. Did you even read my post silly goose?

Well, it would seem they have been lying. Your initial statement claims that CRZ laid the groundwork for Connected Realms. Connected Realms is just a fancy term for merger. They could have merged realms without ever implementing CRZ. CRZ was little more than a band-aid for dead/dying realms/zones. Giving CRZ praise for being some sort of catalyst for future endeavors is like thanking the Germans for forcing us to speed up our technological advances back in the 40s.

No, it's really not. I don't think you realize what you're suggesting. We're saying the same thing and you're interpreting it differently. Yes, in terms of the underlying tech, CRZ and connected realms are the same thing.

They are not the same thing in terms of scope and commitment. Connected realms probably require some infrastructure changes to make the merge more efficient - i.e., not having all the problems of transient connected realms - but at the cost of making the merge permanent. Blizzard was probably not willing, from a business or technical standpoint, to make the leap into permanent live server merges until they had some empirical data to look at.

CRZ was dumb to begin with, and that's one of the only changes Blizzard has ever made to WoW that I'll say that about. It never should have been in the game and with realm mergers it's about time to get rid of it.

CRZ has made levelling an absolute pain. Ever tried doing the starting barrens quests recently? Takes hours because the mobs are camped. Absolutely no point whatsoever in filling the world up when the world isn't capable of dealing with the amount of players required.

It makes rare hunting so much worse and I've personally (as someone who's levelled by questing a lot) seen absolutely 0 benefit to myself as a customer and those around me that CRZ has given. Never once have I thought "oh that will work because of CRZ" or "CRZ helps there". It has been solely a detriment to gameplay since it's implementation, for me.

Originally Posted by Endus

which is kind of like saying "of COURSE you can't see the unicorns, unicorns are invisible, silly."

Why do people want empty zones? Fine, your 47th alt might not give a damn about leveling and is just rushing through.
That is not the case for everyone.

Quest mobs are a resource just like ore, herbs etc and this game is structured around competition for those resources being a bad thing. The tech for shared mob credit was introduced in Cata, but that only works if the named mobs in question also have instant respawn timers (most do not). Additionally, a large majority of the quests in Nagrand and WOTLK do not have the "shared" tag turned on.

This has turned nearly every quest I ran into doing 58-68 that involved killing a named mob into a 5-10 minute wait for the respawn while spamming AOE mindlessly hoping you tags the mob over the 5-6 other faction players in the area doing the same. I can't see many new players wanting to deal with that more than once let alone for 10 solid levels.

No, it's really not. I don't think you realize what you're suggesting. We're saying the same thing and you're interpreting it differently. Yes, in terms of the underlying tech, CRZ and connected realms are the same thing.

They are not the same thing in terms of scope and commitment. Connected realms probably require some infrastructure changes to make the merge more efficient - i.e., not having all the problems of transient connected realms - but at the cost of making the merge permanent. Blizzard was probably not willing, from a business or technical standpoint, to make the leap into permanent live server merges until they had some empirical data to look at.

So rather that using their own PTR to try and merge two realms together and hope for success, they implemented CRZ to test a theory and create more havoc than help? I would have to say that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Them for doing it, and you for thinking it was a great business move.

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Originally Posted by MasterHamster

Why do people want empty zones? Fine, your 47th alt might not give a damn about leveling and is just rushing through.
That is not the case for everyone.

I don't want empty zones, I simply want the zones attached to my merged realms. There are now 5 connected realms to mine. We have plenty of people again. CRZ is no longer needed as a bandaid. They finally performed the needed surgery to resolve the issue.

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Originally Posted by Efrye

Phasing is even worse than CRZ if you ask me. Try flying with a 2-seater over phased areas. That's pain.